Moving freight on public transit: Best practices,challenges, and opportunities

Freight on Transit (FOT) refers to an operational strategy where public transit vehicles and/or infrastructure are used to move freight. Examples include moving goods alongside passengers on buses, attaching cargo trailers to transit vehicles, and operating freight vehicles between trains on subway lines. This paper describes the methods and results of a three-round Delphi study engaging 34 transportation experts to explore challenges and opportunities of FOT and to conceptualize and evaluate potential FOT operations in Toronto. Traditional Delphi methods were used for the exploration of FOT challenges and opportunities, and a modified approach was formulated to integrate experts' opinions and develop new FOT concepts for Toronto. The results support previous claims that technical challenges of FOT may be easier to overcome than institutional barriers. Evaluation of potential FOT operating strategies in Toronto suggests that while the current public transit network does not have capacity to support additional movements, there may be realistic opportunities to include freight service in future projects as a means of offsetting operating costs and reducing the impacts of goods movements.     

Off-season tourists and the cultural offer of a mass-tourism destination: The case of Rimini

This paper assesses the potential implications on off-season tourism of enhancing the cultural offer of Rimini, a popular Italian seaside holiday destination hosting about 12 million overnight stays per year. Since more than 9 million of these stays are concentrated in the summer season, in the last 20 years. Rimini has been undergoing a policy of seasonality smoothing, which mainly pivots around business and cultural tourism. This assessment has been carried out through discrete choice experiments submitted to a sample of about 800 tourists who visited Rimini outside the summer months. Since tourism can be viewed as a composite good, which overall utility depends on how the component characteristics are arranged, the choice experiments allow to disentangle the importance and the willingness to pay of tourists for different attributes of the holiday. The choice model incorporates a number of possible changes to actual tourism features (which are also the subject of public debate), including them in hypothetical alternative “holiday packages”. The conditional logit analysis of the choice experiments can highlight any synergy or trade-off between cultural and business tourism. Results suggest that business and leisure tourists share many features related to the use of the territory, while there are important trade-offs between these two groups and cultural tourists. Since business tourists have a higher willingness to extend their stay, a softer budget, and their demand is also complementary to the demand of summer tourists (Brau, Scorcu, & Vici, 2009), from the destination point of view investing in this market segment would be the best option. Although a “second best”, however, cultural tourists share with the local population of Rimini many aspects of the demand of territory (Figini, Castellani, & Vici, 2009). Hence, cultural tourism can play a fundamental role in the intermediate season as a tool for smoothing seasonality, to diversify investments and to give value to the city’s cultural heritage.     

Short-haul city travel is truly environmentally sustainable

With rising interest in and concern about climate change and environmental sustainability, and the significance of the tourism industry worldwide, the impact of tourism-related activities and behaviors on the environment has become a key area of research. In particular, transport related to tourism has come under scrutiny for its contribution to the ecological footprint of tourism of a destination, mostly accounted for by the dominance of air travel. This study contributes to research in this area by identifying the types of travel situations in which tourists make environmentally friendly choices about travel modes and, consequently, which types of tourism destinations should seek to develop and promote in order to minimize the environmental impact of the tourist sector on both an individual destination and global scale.     

Reducing visitor car use in a protected area: a market segmentation approach to achieving behaviour change

This research uses a market segmentation approach to reducing transport-related environmental burdens from visitors, while maintaining economic benefit. The approach was tested in the Lake District National Park (UK). It aimed first to explore visitor transport behaviour using a social psychological framework, to understand what might best predict desired behaviour change (i.e. reduced visitor car use). Second, it developed and tested different types of marketing messages to reduce car use, based on persuasive communication theory, establishing marketing propositions appropriate to different visitor types and market segments. Third, it identified market segments with both a high propensity towards positive behavioural change and the highest economic contribution to the destination. The work is based on Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behaviour and on persuasive communication. Three hundred and ninety completed questionnaires were obtained. The paper emphasises the importance of context in successful communication to influence behaviour and shows that a market segmentation approach to behavioural change can be successful. Complex patterns of visitor mobility and modal choice emerge. For example “New Explorers” and “Familiar Families” are most likely to reduce their car use (45% and 48% respectively) and less likely to perceive this as difficult.     

“三规合一”背景下的城乡总体规划

"三规合一"是当前城乡总体规划的创新方向。如何加强规划的统筹与管理,推动国民经济和社会发展规划、城乡总体规划和土地利用总体规划等规划的"多规合一"是当前规划业界所关注的焦点。结合城乡总体规划的发展趋势,探讨在"三规合一"的新背景下,城乡总体规划体系的适应与对策。     

Public participation and local environmental planning: Testing factors influencing decision quality and implementation in four case studies from Germany

Public and stakeholder participation in environmental planning is often assumed to enhance effectiveness through improving the environmental quality of decisions and enhancing implementation. We draw on the literature on participatory environmental governance in order to derive key participation-related factors that are hypothesized to impact on decision quality and implementation. We then outline four cases of decision-making processes in local environmental planning in Germany, representing a variety of forms of public participation, and what we suggest can be seen as four different pathways to ‘success’ in participatory planning. The case studies, recounted on the basis of stakeholder interviews and secondary research, are subjected to a cross-case analysis in order to examine the influence of participation in each case. We consider how key participation-related factors played out across the cases, and assess both decision quality and implementation against counterfactual non-participatory, or less-participatory, scenarios. In moving beyond accounts of ‘what happened’, and considering how participation changed the order of things relative to ‘what would have happened’ under different scenarios, the research highlights how very different pathways may lead to ‘success’ in participatory environmental planning from the viewpoint of process organizers and planners sympathetic to environmental issues. We conclude that, given the significance of context and surprises, planners and process organizers must be open to different pathways to the successful conclusion of participatory planning processes.     

土地利用总体规划修编指标利益冲突问题研究

研究目的：分析规划修编中,中央和地方、地方和地方之间在确定规划指标时利益冲突的成因和表现形式。研究方法：文献资料法,博弈分析法。研究结果：中央政府和地方政府土地利用追求目标上的差异是导致规划指标分解过程中产生冲突的主要原因。政府之间信息不对称是造成指标分解冲突的重要原因。研究结论：整合中央和地方的利益、实行参与式规划,做好规划修编过程中的上下结合,减少冲突,使得各项指标的确定能够有利于协调区域发展,并得到各地区的认同。     

模拟退火算法在土地利用总体规划中的应用

土地利用总体规划的核心就是土地利用结构的配置,在土地利用结构配置的各种方法中,模型法是一种较好的方法,提出了基于模拟退火算法模型的土地利用总体规划方法.介绍了模拟退火算法的模型和关键技术,并以铜山县为例进行了模型设计,把土地类型分为十大类,把经济效益最大化作为主导规划目标,将其它效益作为约束条件.根据设计的模型编程实现,得到了预期的结果,结果表明模拟退火算法是一种土地利用总体规划的有用的、有潜力的优化方法.     

土地利用规划实施评价的指标体系构建

研究目的:为科学地开展上轮规划实施评价提供依据,为同类研究提供参考。研究方法:文献研究、理论研究和系统工程分析方法。研究结果:提出了土地利用规划实施评价指标体系的建立原则,构建了土地利用规划实施评价的指标体系。研究结论:系统地设计了土地利用规划实施评价指标体系的框架,政策执行评价指标(控制指标)体系、土地利用程度提升评价指标(非控制指标)体系、规划方案实施效果和社会影响评价指标体系、规划实施后经济效益、社会效益和生态效益的评价指标体系。     

南海区土地规划管理信息系统的开发与应用

南海区土地利用总体规划修编是国土资源部县级规划修编试点之一，鉴于南海良好的土地信息化基础和修编试点的要求，我们在规划编制工作一开始，就十分重视土地规划管理信息系统的开发和应用。本文总结和介绍了南海区土地规划管理信息系统的建设目标、系统功能和特点、应用成效，并对其应用前景作了展望。